[ericd]

This always comes up in these threads. There are very good reasons not to short things, even if you think they are a house of cards. It's a strongly negative EV trade, on average, share borrowing costs will eat you alive if your timing is off, limited upside+unlimited downside, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", etc. Most people should not try to time the market. That doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.

[sumedh]

> That doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.

Well if you are not confident with you own analysis why preach it to others then. If you are going give excuses that the markets are irrational then you should not give opinions about things you are not confident about.

[ericd]

He said xyz would fail, he didn't say they would fail imminently.

You can very rationally simultaneously believe you're right about the future and not want to make a bet on it in the market - you need to not only be right, but right at very close to the right time, unless you're going long.

The bar for sharing your opinions is not "willing to bet on them in the market".

[sumedh]

> He said xyz would fail, he didn't say they would fail imminently.

What does that even mean, in the end with a long period of time all companies would fail. If he claims he can look at the data he should be able to predict the imminence if not he is just using weasel words.

> The bar for sharing your opinions is not "willing to bet on them in the market".

The bar for taking opinions seriously about gloom and doom prediction is.

[kiriakasis]

Dropping in to give an alternate interpretation.

When, many layer up joefranklinsrs said that china would fail I think he likely meant that china today would fail in a number of years.

That is, it would have to change in some meaningful way to keep succeeding and so in term or reliable investment is not a good option whether it fail or not.

[sumedh]

> he likely meant that china today would fail in a number of years.

How many years?

[kiriakasis]

who knows, that is irrelevant in some sense. more than the number of years the focus should be on the causes and the problems causing it to fail.

when china will fail likely all that predicted it would have guessed by mere luck. But they might have spotted the right problems.

If I had to take a very wild guess the only ways china could fail would be success from external attack or side problems with their ability to handle the usual problems.

Also when somebody says X will fail in Y years they might mean "im working so that it will happens"